The Hackenblog

Eric Clapton on Robert Johnson:

Totally lovin’ Clark’s Picks

Related: Couldn’t find Stones in my Passway, but this will do, maybe moreso. You can still hear what Clapton was talking about.

You may bury my body down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit may catch a Greyhound bus and ride.

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“I’m sure there are those who assume Twitchell is now ’set for life’ because of his settlement with the government, and that he can now retire to the lap of luxury. He is under no obligation to continue being a productive artist, and with his murals coming under attack from every direction, some would ask why doesn’t he just give up. That would be a complete misreading of the artistic spirit. Twitchell has devoted his life’s work to muralism, and knowing his devotion to the art, it’s a certainty he’d much rather have his mural of Ed Ruscha standing in pristine condition than to be awarded a cash settlement - no matter how large. Twitchell’s admonition that muralists ‘cannot coexist’ with graffiti vandals is more an avowal to stand firm than it is a statement of surrender, and in the effort to re-establish the tradition of community based murals - I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with the muralists.”
Kent Twitchell: The End of Muralism?, Mark Vallen, May 4, 2008

~~~

“Ginger Mayerson: What are the most important aspects and experiences in your practice of art now?

“Leo Limon: I’m Mr. Old G.

“GM: What?

“LL: Oldie but Goodie. But young people call me Mr. A Old G, which is Ancient Oldie but Goodie. It seems like the youth find there’s no future, you know, so the things they do now, they say ‘Yeah, I smoked for three years, man, I almost killed myself, but you know, I got out of it.’ And I’m looking at this 18 year old kid, and I’m going ‘Yeah, wow, my uncle smoked for 80 years.’

“GM: Do they really think there’s no future?

“LL: Yeah, the kids I find out there — I’m looking for taggers — and I find them. There’s thousands of them, literally thousands of them, and they’ve grown up, because of the change of times, in a different generation. There used to be a gang, the neighborhood is called whatever it is and the gang would mark the territory (with graffiti that was the name of the gang ED). And then Maria’s or Johnny’s little brother decided to be part of a crew, which is three or four or five or six at the most kids, who go out and tag. Now they’ve learned through Heavy Metal magazine and interpretations of air brush, well, a spray can gives that look.

“GM: Are they tagging for a gang for themselves?

“LL: Themselves.

“GM: Oh, so this is Me-Tagging?

“LL: Yeah, Me-Tagging.

“GM: I’ve seen some amazing tags in my neighborhood. Especially on the freeway and on billboards. I’m amazed they can do that without killing themselves. I mean, do you consider these taggers to be, like, the new muralists?

“LL: No, because these kids know nothing about the local art history, they’re tagging the murals. There’s commercialism in tagging. Like I said, I have a certificate in sign painting, and these guys (taggers ED) are signing, but they’re not saying anything. Their tag, which is their art, is their signature. And they sign them, and they actually put a copyright on them, with a stencil.”
Interview with Leo Limon, J LHLS, June 20, 2005

~~~

“In mid-October (2007), some of the murals were whitewashed without warning. (Gloria) Molina and the Department of Public Works denied involvement, but in December, Molina got the county Board of Supervisors to pass an emergency motion giving the Friends of the Los Angeles River 90 days to paint over the murals or pay up to $70,000 for their removal.

“County crews removed about 60 million square feet of graffiti in 2006 at a cost of about $32 million, county officials have said.

“The Friends group stands by the idea of having art by the river, spokeswoman Shelly Backlar said. But the organization, which is scrambling to rebuild its stock with the county and the agencies that supervise the river, concedes some of what the artists put into the mural might not belong there.

“‘It’s their permit and their event, and we’ve been pulled in because of the work that we do,’ Backlar said. ‘It’s not what we thought it would be.’

“Councilman Ed Reyes, who originally supported Poli’s project and authorized the permit, said he regrets that decision because he believes the art has attracted gang members, who have added their tags to the riverbed walls.

“The graffiti ’spilled out of the river channel, into the sidewalks, onto the handrails, into buildings,’ Reyes said. ‘Before it was a neutral place, but now we have clear indicators that rival gangs and taggers are showing up there.’”
Graffiti project painting grim picture. L.A. riverbed being turned into art, but critics argue many of images are obscene, inappropriate, by Raquel Maria Dillon, AP, April 6, 2008

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People of NE Los Angeles:

GO to the Atwater Farmers’ Market, Sundays 10-2, buy some lemon and lavender infused goat cheese spread from the goat cheese lady (next to the sage honey lady), buy some strawberries from the stand across and slightly lift from her. Put spread on strawberry. Eat. I saw God, but you might have a different experience.

Just FYI neighbors. DO IT!

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“Obama may have caught a glimpse of what a general election campaign might bring during a recent debate on ABC TV. Badgered by anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos about arcane (yet predictable) trivia such as U.S. flag pins and his relationship with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers (who hosted his first political fund-raiser in 1995), Obama came across as startlingly unprepared.

“‘Playing gotcha with Democrats and patty-cake with Republicans,’ Joe Conason explained on salon. com, ‘will remain basic operating procedure for the mainstream media this year, no different from the past half-dozen presidential campaigns…. [T]he same fuzzy but obsessive focus on “character” that plagues Bill and Hillary Clinton will be turned on him with equal or greater ferocity by those who once claimed to admire him. He is now subject to the ‘Clinton rules,’ which have long permitted pundits, editorialists and reporters to indict the former president and first lady for sins that other politicians, mostly Republican, may commit with impunity.’

“Conason compared the hullabaloo over Hillary Clinton’s exaggerated account of her landing in Bosnia to the free pass that Ronald Reagan was granted for his purely imaginary account of liberating Nazi concentration camps, and President Bush for his unexplained ‘lost years’ in the Texas Air National Guard.

“Obama’s inexperience left him vulnerable. If he didn’t want to talk about flag pins, he ought never have explained why he doesn’t wear one. (False patriotism, basically.) Dumb symbolic issues have a way of looming large in November. Obama ought to have purged himself of potentially embarrassing Chicago figures long ago, i.e., Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Ayers and political fixer Tony Rezko. That he hasn’t suggests a certain softness Republican smear artists are sure to exploit mercilessly.”
Superdelegates shouldn’t ignore the odds, Gene Lyons, April 23, 2008

An entire generation of the MSM might have to die out before we get decent press again. Too bad I won’t live to see it. Oh well.

This is a tough choice. I like Hill’s feisty savvy, but I think Obama would get us out of Iraq quicker. But, as I have always said, I’ll vote for whoever gets the nomination.

(and because I’m a bad person, heeeeere’s… (more…)

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Which one is less strange?

Although I think I like the vocal on the Wayne’s World cover better.

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I remember hearing this on Dr. Demento’s show about a week after it was released. I think he said he was glad a rock song could be under three minutes again. Or something odd like that. Then he played “Seafood Mama.” It was a weird segue even by Demento standards.

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“What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a clear sign of decadence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness. Has no one in the nation’s intellectual capital the background and ability to see through a web of categorical assertions? One fashionable line of response to Paglia is to claim that even though she may be fundamentally off-base, she has ‘flashes of brilliance.’ If so, I missed them in her oceans of swill.”
Impolitic, by Molly Ivins, sometime in 1991 in Mother Jones

If God really cared, we could go back and swap Paglia for Molly. Damn, I miss Molly.

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“It’s a bit of an understatement that [X (Amanda Marcotte)] doesn’t exactly have the best record on race issues. The sort of feminist issues that you’ll see covered at Brownfemipower’s essentially never see the light of day at Pandagon, and she’s been called out more than a few times over the years for dismissing and silencing women of colour when they’ve called her out about offensive comments that she’s made.

“So, Brownfemipower makes a brilliant speech about immigrant abuses being a feminist issue at the WAM conference a few days ago, at which [X] was in attendance. Days later, [X] writes an Alternet article which is pretty clearly cribbed from it - surprise surprise, without due credit. Bravo.”

~snip~

“It’s bad enough that [X] has a long history of ignoring or dismissing women of colour as a feminist ‘big blogger’, but resorting to stealing the stuff of others - the WoC bloggers who tackle this stuff day in and day out, no less, is an all new low. So I’d like to add my voice to that cry: just stop it. Give credit where credit is due.”
Stealing other people’s stuff is not cool, Burning Words, April 9, 2008

By the time this posts to the Hackenblog it will be old news, but I use this blog as a record for myself most of the time. So if you want current events, read Cursor.org.

So why did BrownFemmePower take her entire site down over this? Hmmmmm.

I think I’ll start reading Burning Words on a regular basis.

BrownFemiPower responds to…something.

Skippy, where I left a comment, links to PhysioProf on Amanda.

Twisty.

Jesus, even I’m sick of this subject.

I guess I’m not sick of the subject.

I Guess It’s a Jungle in Here Too, Huh

Breaking up with Pandagon

There’s a saying in Hollywood Amanda might want to know about: Be nice to everyone on your way up because you’ll meet them again on your way down.

I wonder what Jesse and Pam S are thinking about this mess.

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April 19 - Finally, photographic proof I was in Texas.

April 14 - I’m back, it was great, and I’m very tired. I’ll post a link when the video of the whole show is up. I was very pleased with everything they did. It was amazing. Also, Texas bbq is fabulous.

To see a theatrical interpretation of “Darkness at Sunset and Vine.”

I’d like to thank the fabulous Dr. Kelly S. Taylor for bringing my angry novella to the wider world and Arkansas, where, I am told, it was a big fucking hit.

Also of interest: The production concept and the Darkness at Sunset and Vine Trilogy (Kelly’s only doing part I, but doing it extremely well) if you run out of things to read while I’m gone.

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Of course I was mere child when this aired but I kind of remember this.

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“‘Charlton Heston is an axiom. He constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any film being enough to instill beauty. The pent-up violence expressed by the somber phosphoresence of his eyes, his eagle’s profile, the imperious arch of his eyebrows, the hard, bitter curve of his lips, the stupendous strength of his torso — that is what he has been give, and what not even the worst of directors can debase. It is in this sense that one can say that Charlton Heston, by his very existence and regardless of the film he is in, provides a more accurate definition of the cinema than films like Hiroshima Mon Amour or Citizen Kane, films whose aesthetic either ignores or repudiates Charlton Heston.’

“So goes the most notorious passage of one of the most controversial piece of film criticism ever written, ‘In Defense of Violence’ by Michel Mourlet, published in Cahiers du Cinema #107,m May 1960. One cannot but recall this signal work by the MacMahonist High Priest now that Moses, Ben-Hur, Michelangelo, El Cid, NRA president et.al. has bought the farm.”

~snip~

“Back in 1941 he had little to offer but his babe-a-liciousness in Peer Gynt, an exceedingly low-budget rendition of Ibsen in which director David Bradley (soon-to-be auteur of the ineffable They Save Hitler’s Brain) decided that the best thing to do was have Chuck wear as little as possible (hubba-hubba.)” Hear hear!

~snip~

Re: slashy backstory in Ben Hur

“No surprise there. And no surprise that he agreed to go along because ‘anything is better than what we’ve got.’ And so Boyd was told about his motivation, but not Heston. For Wyler cautioned ‘Don’t ever tell Chuck what it’s all about, or he’ll fall apart.’ One can only wonder why Heston, who began his acting career under the direction of David Bradley, and continued the better part of it running around half-naked, would ‘fall apart’ over the notion of an off-screen, backstory love affair with Stephen Boyd. But then how could the man who marched with the embodiment of non-violent protest Martin Luther King turn around and head the NRA?

“Perhaps clues can be found in the last act of Heston’s film career which is climaxed by Planet of the Apes, in which not only his heroric demeanor but physical self is brought low, and continues with the dystopian horror of Soylent Green.”
Death of an Axiom, Fablog, April 6, 2008 (The only Heston obit you’ll ever need!)

I can’t help it, Charlton Heston was sex on legs in “Ben Hur” and I love the whole galley slave rescuing the Roman admiral and making him row scenes. Woof. Subtext anyone?

Yeah, Gary Cooper was also a rightwingnut, and I like him, too. What is it with these beautiful men? Does it go to their heads? (Hey, write your own jokes.)

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“2. Issa Weeps Over Premature Withdrawal from Gubernatorial Race

“In the film, A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks proclaims, “there’s no crying in baseball.” If that same standard applied to American politics, Darrell Issa’s career would have ended long ago.

“In 2003, Issa led the effort to recall California Governor Gray Davis. (Davis was undone by the energy crisis which crippled the Golden State thanks in large part to market manipulation by Enron.) But part two of the Issa plan - to capture the Governor’s office himself - abruptly ran aground when Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to get in the race.

“On August 7, 2003, Issa shocked supporters and announced he would not continue his candidacy. Comically claiming, “It had nothing to do with Schwarzenegger’s decision,” Issa at times wept uncontrollably as he made his premature withdrawal. (This video shows Issa’s pathetic performance as he concluded his gubernatorial ambitions had been terminated. The water works start around the 7:30 mark.)”
op 10 Darrell Issa Hall of Shame Moments, Perrspectives, April 4, 2008 (via)

Having bought the recall for himself and then having it whipped out from under him, I tried to make the word Issa synonymous with sucker, alas, it never got much traction.

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Enjoy!

Clark’s Picks (mmmmm, I sure like this guy’s taste in music)

The Real vs The Spiel

The Velvet Grindstone

Cartoon Brew

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“With 10 states and territories left to vote, Clinton can definitely pull ahead. Never mind all the ‘Who shot John?’ arguments over the DNC’s screwball decision to penalize those two crucial swing states for moving their primaries up (although New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina were permitted to do so ). The fairest solution would have been a re-vote, but Obama supporters have prevented that from happening. Tell me again what a ‘transformative figure’ he is, because on this score the politician Obama most resembles is George W. Bush. Wilentz also points out that if the Democrats used the state-by-state, winner-take-all standard used in Republican primaries and the general election, Clinton would now have approximately 500 more delegates than Obama and have the nomination locked up. That’s because she’s won almost all the big, Democratic and swing states necessary to prevail in November. Finally, there’s this puzzler: Evidently, it’s hunky-dory for Massachusetts superdelegates like Sens. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and Gov. Deval Patrick to pledge their votes to Obama, even though Clinton won the state’s primary decisively. How, then, can Obamaphiles call it an anti-democratic outrage for other superdelegates to support Clinton, even if she wins their states, too? See what I mean? Let the voters speak, then decide.”
Let Obama-Clinton contest play itself out, by Gene Lyons, April 9, 2008

I don’t care who wins, just Get. Us. Out. Of. Iraq. Now.

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“Now, as all things must, it has shown up on ebay. Someone has found twelve original negatives to the English dubbed version in the vaults of Los Angeles’s KCOP-13 and is selling them on ebay for $24,000. Close up images of these negs can be viewed here. Note that one is marked for use by New York’s TV station WPIX (where I saw it as a kid).”
Tezuka’s Amazing Three, Cartoon Brew, April 4, 2008

Ah ha! I watched this on Channel 13 in LA as a kid, but no one on earth seemed to know what I was talking about when I described a Japanese cartoon with aliens disguised as barnyard animals, so I figured I dreamed it. Nice to know I didn’t. Although I seem to remember it in color, but, um, maybe I dreamed that part, I dunno…

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“1. Sense of humor. There is not one guy I know of that doesn’t appreciate a who girl laughs at his dumb jokes simply out of a sensitive humorous bone.When a woman laughs, there is always a beam of light that comes across a guy’s face, and if the laughter is, say from a woman across the room, it has the power to make a man jealous, wanting that laughter to be for him. Humor is child-like energy and is like a billboard mounted to a woman’s forehead that says “Open Heart!” Men feel it on a gut level, it’s in the nature of polarity to men and women. I’m not talking about faking a sense of humor, because that kind of inauthenticity will throw red flags. You can always tell a person who is trying to laugh to gain some sort of approval. I’m saying a woman sensitive to humor is a great find for a man.”
12 Things a Woman Does That Men Find Irresistible, Yintegrity, March 29, 2008

I really should get out more.

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(click on image for full size)

Thank you to Seth Anderson at B12 Partners Solipsism for the cover images, which are “Rookery” on the front cover and “Before the Rain Blues” on the back. Chicagoans might recognize at least one of these images.

There’s still some room left for blog essays in the first issue. Here’s more information on the whole deal. I won’t be finalizing anything until after April 18, so if you want in, send me your blog essay on or before April 17 on one of these templates:

MS Word or Rich Text Format or Plain Text. Don’t worry about how it looks, I’ll be formatting up a storm in the final document.

But whether your blog essay is in there or not, J Bloglandia 1:1 is going to have a very lovely cover.

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(via Cartoon Brew)

And I thought I had a thing for Tron.

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“Which doesn’t, in that poll or others, mean Obama would lose—that poll shows him winning (and take all such polls with grains of salt; many things could happen between now and November). But it does suggest he would win with a different mix of votes than Clinton. In choosing a nominee, primary voters and convention delegates are choosing between different historical and future versions of the Democratic party, in which different mixes of people identify as Democrats, going forward.

And as with all Batman v. Superman matchups, the question is inevitably, which one is more powerful? Why?”
Superman vs. Batman, Edge of the American West, March 21, 2008

Comics! There’s no escape!

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“Everyone’s an art critic when it comes to a $195,000 mural for the LAPD’s new Hollenbeck station.

“The tile mural was meant to depict a quaint Sunday in Boyle Heights. Many angry residents say it makes their neighborhood out to be a crime-ridden dump filled with fat women, stray dogs, beer-swilling men and illegal street vendors. And don’t get them started about the piñata.

“‘There’s no American flag. There seems to be a rule against that,’ said Rosalie Gurrola, born and raised in Boyle Heights, to rousing cheers and applause at a recent community meeting. ‘We need an American flag!’

“The 4,000 tiles are glazed, fired and ready to be installed next month, but public outcry threatens to keep the artwork from ever going up.

“The 100-foot mural by artist Sandow Birk has unwittingly tapped a raw nerve below the surface of a seemingly homogenous community, widely considered L.A.’s mothership of Mexican culture.

“Residents complained about the unleashed dogs, about the ‘illegal’ street vendors, about a man holding a can they guessed was beer. They complained about what wasn’t shown — historical figures, children reading books, more war veterans, positive images of cops — and about what was.

“‘This one lady has clothes drying on bushes,’ said Vera Del Pozo, 56. ‘I’ve seen that in Mexico. Not here.’”
Mural sparks outcry from residents of L.A.’s Eastside. To some in Boyle Heights, a work made of tiles proposed for the Hollenbeck police station contains too many Latino stereotypes, by Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, March 20, 2008

When is Cultural Affairs going to wake up in, y’know, Los Angeles? When? Idiots.

Here’s a pdf if the LAT removes the article.

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“But as strange as that is, a stunning revelation came from a very senior Japanese executive, who sent these notes from a meeting with a top Japanese financial official:

The depth of the problems at Bear Stearns which led up to the buyout are not clear. Mr. X wondered why they did not try to use committed credit lines before agreeing to the JPM Chase deal. These lines were significant and included large amounts committed by Japanese banks, who are now relieved that they did not have to extend the credit.

“Maybe Bear assumed at the rate of its cash depletion that it would burn through those credit lines quickly and being more leveraged might make other solutions more difficult, but the tone of the Japanese notes is that the credit lines were large enough in aggregate to have made a difference.

“And even odder: those credit lines are still in place. Why did the Fed stump up a whole $30 billion? This seems a tremendous oversight on its behalf. Of course, those lines probably terminate upon a change in control, but the Fed probably could have leaned on the banks to keep them in place (after all, they are lending against a better balance sheet with JPM, although adding the Bear lines to whatever credit facilities they now have with JPM might put them over their limits for exposure to any one bank. But the Fed could have offered to backstop the excess, which would be a smaller commitment than the one it made).

“Stranger and stranger….”
Why didn’t Bear use its credit lines?, Naked Capitalism, March 21, 2008

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“LOS ANGELES — If Barack Obama is elected president, his speech on race in America will be remembered as one of the greatest in the country’s history. If he loses, it will still be remembered as a terrific speech, an astonishing display of grace under pressure.

“Those who care about the American dilemma — a racial history that contradicts our stated beliefs — will filter their perceptions through their own life experience, their own political bias, their own emotional stake in this particular election. Whatever the political effect, however, the man obviously said what he really thought.

“He told the truth: We are all racists. That does not mean that we are all prejudiced, but it does mean we notice the color of the people around us, and that affects the way we think and talk and act. And he was probably right about most of us, black and white, when he asserted that our racism is generational, that old men like Pastor Wright and me have more trouble dealing with race than do our children and, I expect, than our grandchildren will.

“That’s the way it is. We are on a long trail to a post-racial society — we may never reach the end — and this election will give some indications how far along we really are.”
Hearing the Obama Speech, by Richard Reeves, March 19, 2008

Yes, I bet even Bill and Hill would be proud to vote for Obama after that speech. This is not an Obama endorsement, but if America has to face it, really face it, on race, all the races, then that can only be good for us and the world.

I think Reeves is wrong about one thing here: whether Senator Obama wins or not, this is going to be remembered as one of the greatest speeches on race in America. It’s a tough subject, I thought he did a stellar job with it.

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“When we do talk about the production concept (and generally we don’t) the cast talks about it in terms of movies like ‘Escape from New York’ and the ‘Die Hard’ movies. In my production concept statement that I’ve just written and posted, I talk about the production as if it were a futuristic version of ‘The Big Sleep.’ This disparity is fine by me. ‘Escape from New York’ is essentially a futuristic version of ‘The Big Sleep.’ (And if my cast wonders why I never just told them that I think we’re doing ‘The Big Sleep’ it’s because that if I did, you (and I) may have never been motivated to think about the many ways it’s like ‘Escape from New York’ and the ‘Die Hard’ because traditionally the director dictates the interpretation of the script to the cast… And we might never have thought up that cool motorcycle battle at the end.) However, these differing genre models may go far to explain why the cast didn’t really care if we cut Fyodor Chandler or not and I wake up thinking about it at 4 am.

“The scene with Fyodor Chandler provides a moment where Nellie at least momentarily finds her moral compass. It makes what she does afterwards make more sense. In the modern action-adventure film, actions don’t necessarily have to have moral motivation… or even make sense, for that matter.

“I still worry that I’ve just become the studio hack who cut the scene from ‘The Big Sleep’ that explained who committed the murder Phillip Marlowe was supposed to be investigating. I think my cast knows everyone will be too busy listening to Bogart and looking at Bacall to care.”
Darkness at Sunset and Vine Director’s Log, The Ides of March, 2008

Oh, man, dystopian linguists don’t get no respect. But this Director log thingy is way cool. And there’s video, too!

Click here for a better idea of what the hell I’m on about. Some of you might remember the enraged anti-bush novellas from 2003-2005 that are the Darkness at Sunset and Vine trilogy. Many cool bloggers of those years ended up in those stories, or at least plays on their names did. The first novella is being produced as a theater piece in Denton Texas, and performed there, Savannah, Georgia and somewhere in Arkansas in March and April. Hey, if Hillary can win Texas and 9 inches of snow can fall in the Metroplex, then Darkness at Sunset and Vine can be performed in the Southland. Oy.

By the way, Fyodor Chandler came out of a conversation I had with Jane Seaton about how I felt like the story was a cross between Dostoyevsky and The Long Goodbye. So of course the next logical thing was to name a character Fyodor Chandler. Isn’t that what anyone would do?

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“Finally, there are the “Tier 3″ sex workers, who can charge in excess of $10,000 per rendezvous. They may have only four or five clients, and they typically charge their clients an additional monthly surcharge for their various needs—rent, clothing, medicine.

“Both Tier 2 and Tier 3 workers can typically do more to safeguard a client’s privacy. There are no guarantees, of course, but they tend to shun contractual relationships with agencies that advertise their services. There is less of a paper trail. They typically will only take a john via a referral, and even then, they may require that the john ‘date’ them for weeks before deciding to offer up sex. I have heard of Tier 2 and 3 sex workers who vet prospective clients for months, sometimes hiring a private detective to see if the john is stable—psychologically and financially. As a former attorney general, Spitzer must have known all this.

“What high-end clients pay for may surprise you. For example, according to my ongoing interviews of several hundred sex workers, approximately 40 percent of trades in New York’s sex economy fail to include a physical act beyond light petting or kissing. No intercourse, no oral stimulation, etc. That’s one helluva conversation. But it’s what many clients want. Flush with cash, these elite men routinely turn their prostitute into a second partner or spouse. Over the course of a year, they will sometimes persuade the woman to take on a new identity, replete with a fake name, a fake job, a fake life history, and so on. They may want to have sex or they may simply want to be treated like King for a Day.”
Skinflint, by Sudhir Venkatesh, Slate, March 12, 2008

I mean, wtf? guys? I hate to tell you this but there’s more to life than your dick and you ego.

And Spitzer, you threw away your chance to make the world a better place. You, your dick and your ego can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.

And, sisters, $10K a month to prop up some guy’s ego and maybe blow him? Advantage capitalism. Christ. I know women who work two jobs for the luxury of doing that. Oh, but they’re in love, so that’s different.

How lucky I found this, too!

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Fablog and YouTube.

Hmmm.

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“2 Sex—what is it good for? Scientists are not sure, since asexual reproduction is a better evolutionary strategy in some important ways.

“6 Barbary macaques have a distinctive way to get their mates to make a sperm donation: yelling. If the female does not shout, the male almost never climaxes.

“7 How do we know this? German primatologist Dana Pfefferle watched a group of macaques, counting the females’ yells and the males’ pelvic thrusts. She says this work is ‘quite weird, but it’s science.’

“11 The tiny male paper nautilus, an octopus, impregnates the much larger female by shooting his penis (a modified tentacle) into her—and leaving it there.

“12 Homosexual behavior is found in at least 1,500 species of mammal, fish, reptile, bird, and even invertebrate.”
20 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex, Discover, March 19, 2008

Ah, nature, sorry, Nature.

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I like Senator Obama as much as I like Senator Clinton and I will gladly vote for either of them.

Either will be a fine president, and certainly far better than what we have now, which ain’t saying much, but there you have it. And as soon as we have a candidate, by God or whatever, I will be behind that person 110% 25/8.

Is it November yet? I don’t enjoy election years, but I might enjoy a few more speeches like this one embedded above. Full text off the Obama’08 website behind the jump if you’d rather read it.

(more…)

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“Using the wayback machine, I was able to compare Livejournal popular interests from May, 2007, with those of today. In order of size, these are the interests 6A/SUP has disappeared from the daily popular interests report:

“Sex, Boys, Guys, Girls, Fanfiction, Yaoi, Hardcore, Porn, Bondage, Faeries, Pain, Depression, and Bisexuality.

“Thanks to silver_ariel at InsaneJournal, I’ve viewed the raw data, confirmed those interests were censored, and I have their real numbers.

“I included many non-censored interests for the purpose of comparison.”
Circle the one that doesn’t belong: (Porn) (Hardcore) (Bondage) (Faeries), Stewardess, March 16, 2008

I’ll be glad when everything I care about moves off LJ and the rest I can read on Bloglines.

Update March 19, 2008: SUP head really hates LJ users, says so in very creepy interview.

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J’ai soif maintenant.

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